


Shattered Fragments

by TriplePirouette



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for for the Rumbelle Secret Santa from the prompt “All we had were fragments.” Everywhere she looks, all Belle can see are the shards of who they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattered Fragments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WonderTwinC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderTwinC/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this, WondertwinC… I had a rough time with this, and I kept trying to find a way to make it pretty, but Angst won out. I briefly toyed with adding in the fourth mid-season finale, but decided to keep it vague and address what I hope were your frustrations with this season, giving you a little bit of an AU ending.

 

All they had were fragments.

 

It was all she could see, really.

 

Tiny shards of glass, little pieces of less than nothing scattered about them.

 

Slivers of metal embedded in their skin, poking and itching but too tiny pull out.

 

On them were names, faces, moments… it was the fragments of their lives, of the lives shattered around them, embedded deep in their skin, in their hearts… in their eyes.

 

When he woke her up in the morning, that little tickle on her cheek and a cup of coffee in his hand, she saw the fragments in his eyes. The ghost of Bae and Neal, two different men but the same person, holding Rumple back, pushing him forward, and assessing shame on his soul. In a blink they were gone, and she could see the man he once was again.

 

When she dusted the shop, running her hands over the antiques and magical items, she imagined that he could see the fine sheen of dust laying over her skin, the dust of old books and the fine mist of ogre spittle shining over her pores, hiding the shame of her mother’s death, hiding the fear of a young girl that simmered just under the surface even now, hiding the kinds of sins only someone so dark as him might ever, ever forgive.

 

When he handed her the mail, little more than advertisements for Granny’s and the town newspaper, she could see faces in the sheen of his well manicured nails. Cracked, warped faces of the people in this town, people who made deals. People who think themselves so much higher, so much more morally clean than her husband…

 

…she sees her own face among them and knows they are just as low as she, as low as he, as low as they both are… just as much a slave to the needs and desires of their souls as any man, woman or child in this world or any other.

 

In her reflection she sees a façade, fake confidence that doesn’t exist, a mask of bravery she’s always wanted, but never fully claimed. She sees someone who plays at the person she wants to be, who is afraid of ever really stepping into that role. Belle knows that he sees past it, sees through her mask like it was little more than clear plastic, but she wears it anyway.

 

Over the dinner table she hears the secrets they dare not tell. His darkness swirls like the wine in his glass, her fish flakes away from her fork and feels like her crumbling bravery. The silence is full, pregnant with their worries and fears, saying more than their words ever do with each half smile and every raise of the eyebrow, having full conversations they will never actually speak.

 

When he softly breaks the silence, it might as well be a deafening roar. “How was your day, dear?” He asks about the library, but the beast within him flares at his shoulders, wondering if she’s decided to leave him yet.

 

She smiles, tells him a silly anecdote about one of the school children re-shelving Dr. Seuss books throughout the whole building, and hopes he doesn’t see how hard she’s trying to be the person she wants to be, to be the person he thinks she is. “And yours?” she asks gently, wondering if she’s just stepped on a mine that will explode in her face.

 

It’s panic that she sees in his eyes, and she wonders what lie he might tell, what wrong he doesn’t want to expose. He’s been a little darker lately, a little more broken, since… She hated to even think of what he’d been through. She held him tight at night, waiting for the tossing and turning to start. Since he’d been reborn of the curse of the Dark One, since he’d lost his son, since he’d played puppet at Zelena’s hand… So many horrible things had happened to him in just weeks and it had taken its toll. Some nights it was screams from his side of the bed, some nights he curled in on himself and wept in his sleep. It had taken them so much to bring some light and honesty to his eyes, for her to help the man she knew him to be shine through the curse that had become like a shroud to him, and now they were so dark again…

 

All they had were fragments, little broken pieces of what some people might think of as a life. Certainly not what the Charmings thought True Love was, or the Happily Ever After that anyone else might have searched for, but it was theirs. They did have True Love, she knew it deep in her soul and she had proof in the power of their kiss. It was deep and dark and a profoundly broken version of True Love, but it was theirs and had always been theirs.

 

When he held her hand their shards seemed to slide together. When he caressed her cheek the shards slid home, and it didn’t matter what lies they weren’t telling or what secrets they haven’t revealed yet. In his arms she felt whole, she felt the complementing embrace of his jagged edges, his broken pieces fitting tightly with hers, folding together until they were one.

 

He’s always felt like the missing pieces to her broken edges. In the Dark Castle the evil gleam in his eye awoke something dark inside her, a desire to play, a desire to be heard. He was funny, and caring, and quick to deny it. He also thought about the things she said, she could always see it in his eyes. And her books- oh the books that he gave her. He would never admit that it was because of him when a new one showed up in her library. As much as he professed the opposite, he showed that he cared for her, and it changed them both.

 

She’d fallen in love with the monster because of the man underneath, had seen how his costume of scales and armor of shining skin rounded off his jagged edges into a show for the people around them. Slowly, oh so slowly back then, he’d let that show slip, and revealed the tiny cracks and sharp points of who he truly was.

 

Belle’s own show was just as much for him now as it was for the town. High heels and short skirts, fashion here was just as much about pretending to be put together as it was about style. The dutiful wife was just as much her own armor as her husband’s dragon skin coat had been to him. She tried so very hard to seem capable, to seem able, to try to step in and help with each emergency. She needed to be needed, to be as helpful as her husband could be with his magic. She used her knowledge, her books, and pretended to be brave enough to walk out the door and confront the one handed man who was “good” now and help him, and everyone else, with each little crisis that popped up.

 

She was supposed to forgive them, right? That was the brave thing, to forgive them and move on?

 

What no one saw was the dark corner of her soul that wanted to rip Hook to pieces with his own false hand. For Henry’s sake Belle never told anyone of the slow torture that Regina had put her through, even though she wanted to tie the woman to a bed and put a glass of water just out of her reach for days. She never spoke about how she envied Red’s ability to wear nearly the same clothes, but be so much more…womanly… than she was. She never even whispered to Gold that she remembered each and every moment of being Lacey and how ashamed she felt for actually liking some of it.

 

She never, ever spoke of the dream she had over and over to anyone. The dream where Rumple was back to the sparkling, scaly skin, and he made her own skin shimmer like diamonds as he imbued her with magic. It was the dream where the two of them decided to take over the town together. The dream where she made each and every person that had hurt her suffer in the same way she had at their hands. The dream where he followed her, fingers tented, trilling a laugh with glee with each evil deed that she did. The dream where she woke content and happy and feeling loved because she’d taken her place as his Dark Queen. No, she never told another soul about that dream.

 

She felt like a girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes. Passable, but not truly a woman, not truly the princess she had been meant to be, but not the woman she wanted to be, either. The fragments in her skin ripped at the seams of her dresses, tore at the edges of her so finely tuned persona. They called out to his darkness, needing the power in him to hold her together, needing him to choose her broken pieces, and wanting both of their edges to soften with each breath she took.

 

Belle wrapped her hand around the knob of the back door of the shop, the hairs on her arms standing on end. He was using magic, flooding the shop with it. She could hear voices: his and Hooks. He knew how she felt about the man, Belle’s ire for the captain ran almost as deep as Rumple’s own. She waited until the captain left, opening the door with a shaking hand.

 

The back office was small, and easy to pass through quickly. “Tell me,” she demanded of the back of her husband’s head. Her voice was soft but strong.

 

He turned, his eyes swirling with the blackness of power and fear, the corner of his mouth twitching. She knew that tick- he was trying to choose between the truth and a lie. The shards in her soul shook, the fragments in her ready to break into smaller pieces with every false word from his lips. Her lip quivered, and his eyebrows knit at her tiny movement.

 

His decision was made, and when he came to her, cradling her elbows in his hands, she knew he spoke the truth. “Belle, I have a plan to make all of our dreams come true. I’m going to give you the wonders of the world, all you have to do is trust me.”

 

The shards of glass in her soul felt the edges of his cracks, she felt him hoping for her trust, for her help. Deep inside she didn’t want to know any more, she didn’t want to know what horrible, dark things he planned. Her mind told her to stop him; no dream was worth the dark magic she felt swirling around them.

 

All of her fragments begged to be made whole.

 

Belle reached up and cradled his jaw in her hand, running her thumb over the soft stubble of his cheek. “Tell me everything.”

 

 


End file.
